As the weeks went by, Lance still couldn't find a way to breakthrough into the 2nd rank as a mystic, but even as a 1st rank mystic, he qualified to enter the tournament. At first, Lance felt rather frustrated because of this, but Lily had told him that sometimes, it takes a very specific set of circumstances to advance in ranking as a mystic and a warrior.
As a training junkie, Lance just didn't want to accept this, but he bottled his anger as he made his final preparations for the tournament. The goal was to make a name for himself within the tournament, so he couldn't sit by and groan too long about his lack of advancing forward.
During the night before LIly had told him to meet her and the other students who would be participating in the tournament by the academy's entrance, Lance compiled everything that he felt would help him through the preliminary rounds of the tournament.
In the tournaments of the past, the preliminary rounds the first round had to do with surviving through an area filled with demonic beasts and the second round would be to test a mystic's future potential and other aspects of walking the path of a mystic as a future expert.
In the first preliminary round, contestants would be able to bring a storage ring full of items with them including 1st grade medical pills. However, said storage rings could only be the most basic and the smallest one. Therefore, besides possibly a set of armor and one to two weapons, only a small handful of pills and maybe one or two books could fit inside.
Since the tournament wanted to be fair to all involved, it made these types of little limitations so that someone who came from an extremely wealthy background, wouldn't be able to have countless items to use and to ruin what the tournament was actually meant for. The goal of the tournament besides making sure everyone within the region attending would work diligently in their training, was so that any outsiders looking to recruit some of the contestants would look at Bitter Falls as a place filled with many experts.
More often than not, the weaker regions around the Sun Dynasty would throw tournaments such as this in order to prove that they were not to be looked down upon. And so, this added even more pressure to those whose goal was to place high.Many influential guests from around the Sun Dynasty would either send an expert to scout or would attend themselves. Such opportunities were very hard to come by, so even the noble clans of Bitter Falls took these tournaments very seriously.
Lance had many dreams of becoming stronger as well, and so once Lily explained these things to him, he made all of the preparations which he could including amassing a large amount of medical pills for himself. Placing high within the tournament was one thing, but surviving through these dangerous preliminary rounds was another and unfortunately for Lance, he didn't have the best weapons or armor and needed to even the field in another way.
One of the main pills he included in his storage ring, were medical pills which would allow him to keep his energy high and stomach full. The military would use a higher graded pill and would give them to their soldiers for long conquests to limit the need to transport too much food. In Lance's case, these pills would allow him to not feel the need to eat for at least one day at a time as he consumed them, while the higher graded pills could have this effect last for months or even years at a time.
The other type of medical pill he included in his storage ring, was of course both pills that would help his physical strength recover, as well as his overall stamina. Since he would need to overexert himself using his physical strength during the entire tournament in order to potentially just keep up with everyone else, Lance needed to make sure that he used every possible method to keep this trump card of his.
After packing and falling asleep, Lance dreamed about all of his opponents and their level of strength in the tournament. Lily told him that the average mystic would at least be of the 2nd rank, which also included all of the other students of Griffin Academy who would be attending and trying to fight for a spot.
What Lance kept from LIly, was his clan and the Yellow Serpent clan's enmity with one another. He not only wanted to worry his teacher or possibly the dean, but it was also because the majority of the Yellow Serpent clan's members were of the warrior path and not the mystic path. There were of course exceptions to this, but it wouldn't be enough to cause Lance any danger within the tournament.
The Yellow Serpent clan's influence within the city was extremely high and almost unshakable, but it did not mean that all of the other noble clans within the city were friendly with them. In a tournament setting like this one, the noble clans would most likely try to take down their competitors and if the Yellow Serpent clan made a point to cause Lance any issues, it would just bring him under the protection of those who don't want to see them doing well anyways.
